Political extortion. Corruption of public officials. Conspiracy. Ethical misconduct. And possible violations of state law that governs open meetings of public bodies.

These allegations exploded into the public eye at Tuesday’s Rancho Palos Verdes City Council meeting, exposing long-simmering and increasingly acrimonious disagreements between Councilman Peter Gardiner and his colleagues.

The upshot: Mayor Doug Stern and Councilman Tom Long, both attorneys, each reported Gardiner’s personal lawyer, “Chip” Rawlings, to the district attorney’s Public Integrity Division and the State Bar.

“I believe that an attempt has been made to affect official actions of the City Council under threat or fear of some alleged exposure of criminal conduct,” Stern said Tuesday in a statement, referring to the contents of a series of e-mails from Rawlings. “I believe that there has been an attempted (political) extortion of the City Council.”

Rawlings denied the accusation.

“I’m shocked,” he said Wednesday. “It’s the first time in my career, which spans well over 30 years, that anybody has ever reported me to the bar. And nobody has ever reported me to the District Attorney’s Office for anything.”

It’s wild stuff for a conservative, affluent community more used to heated debates over blocked views from multimillion-dollar homes than political dirty tricks.

Long said Tuesday that some of the charges Gardiner is making through Rawlings are downright “silly.”

“If you look at the accusations Mr. Rawlings leveled, they border on the paranoid,” Long said. “They accuse people of orchestrating positions” against Gardiner.

Months in the making, the charges and countercharges have their roots in fundamental disagreements over city policies between Gardiner, his fellow council members and some senior city staffers.

Gardiner, who is often on the losing end of 4-1 votes and makes suggestions rejected by his fellow council members, did not return a telephone call Wednesday seeking comment.

But essentially, via Rawlings, the marginalized council member attempted a strategy that precipitated Tuesday’s political drama.

He wanted Rawlings to attend a closed council session to discuss a lengthy 150-page report that was to be presented at the open portion of the meeting assessing the city’s organizational structure. As relations have become more strained, Gardiner has taken the unusual step of communicating policy positions to other council members and city staff via Rawlings. Rawlings explained that Gardiner wanted him along because the councilman “refuses to become involved in a conspiracy” involving violations of the state’s open meeting law, withholding “evidence of public corruption” and “misuse of public funds.”

It’s unclear what, if any, evidence exists to back these allegations; Long and Stern say the claims are “unsubstantiated,” and Stern wonders why Gardiner hasn’t gone to the authorities if he has evidence of wrongdoing at City Hall.

Rawlings argued in a series of e-mails to council members that his presence was appropriate because City Manager Carolyn Lehr was to receive a performance evaluation in closed session, and Gardiner had concerns about her oversight of portions of the organizational assessment.

Those concerns included her supervision of the city’s information technology functions, in part performed by the nonprofit Palos Verdes on the Net, which Gardiner has argued costs too much.

Council members rejected the idea, noting the appropriate venue was at the public meeting where the lengthy report was slated for discussion.

Rawlings didn’t like that option. “What I was told is that we were likely to be blocked in the public session if we made comments about the city manager,” he said.

But allowing Rawlings into a closed-door meeting may also be a violation of California law banning “selective closed sessions,” City Attorney Carol Lynch said. “If you allow certain folks in, you must allow everybody in,” she said.

Lynch said Gardiner has not discussed the issue with her.

The extortion claim grew out of a Rawlings e-mail that warned “quiet and cooperative approaches” behind closed doors were preferable to a “public confrontation” that would cause a “massive public outcry.”

Stern interpreted that as extortion.

“No council member should demand that his fellow council members violate (the state open meeting law), so that he can convince them to conduct our public business in a particular manner, and certainly not under the threat of these accusations of wrongful conduct.”

Rawlings said in an e-mail Wednesday that Stern’s interpretation was over the top and that “certain people are trying to shield from public scrutiny the financial dealings between the city and PVnet.”

“Peter was only asking that further investigation be done to ensure that nothing untoward occurred,” Rawlings wrote.

“To try to assert that a citizen’s report of possible problems within a city in both closed and open session, with suggestions of how that might best occur, is somehow either criminal or a proper subject of a bar complaint is quite frankly beyond fair comment and proper behavior.”

Nick Green is the longtime soccer columnist for the Southern California Newspaper Group and covers Torrance, Lomita and the craft beer industry for the Daily Breeze. He also blogs about soccer at www.insidesocal.com/soccer, the local craft beer scene at www.insidesocal.com/beer and the South Bay at blogs.dailybreeze.com/southbay/. The native of England lives in Old Torrance with his wife and two cats.

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